DuclearcFinding my system: why I chose OmniFocus
- Posted on: February 2, 2024
I have a normal problem: I have lots that I want to do, but I feel like I have no time to do them. I say feel, because I'm really not a fan of that kind of argument. "The fault lies on an external factor that's wholly out of my control". Nah. That kind of thought is paralysing. I much prefer the sentiment behind the "one thing you and every great person in history have in common is the same 24h each day to achieve your goals". With that in mind, I decided that the next step towards my dream life would be to become the master of my own time.
Ok, so maybe that's a bit ambitious. I still have a day job that I want to excel at. I have responsibilities towards others that must be tended to. Nonetheless, I'm determined to find the time to feel accomplished.
In order to do that, I decided to completely change up my system. So far, I've had... none, really. The basis of it was that every new piece of input gets added to Things 3 (my favourite task manager). They mostly get a date. Tasks tend to accumulate on my "Today" list, but it was usually fine.
For a few months, though, it stopped being "fine". It started to make me feel less competent. So I started an experiment: everything gets a tag. Each day I go through each tag, which results in much less overwhelming lists and a more clear view of what to do. Whatever doesn't get done today, gets reassigned to "tomorrow" before I move on to the next tag. I rather liked this system. But as my enthusiasm grew, so did my tags. And with them the amount of time I spent doing this. That brewed another experiment: smart lists! But Things 3 doesn't really support them natively. There are tricks you can pull off with URLs and Shortcuts and widgets, but... that's not for me. So I started experiment number 3, and the most success I've achieved was by using a combination of due dates, tags and smart lists (since those were just experiments, I only used Reminders and Notes and it worked surprisingly well... Just not enough to convince me that I could stick with those apps alone). Unfortunately though, that meant Things 3 had to go (which, FYI, I'm still sad about!).
I mean... the writing was on the wall. Not so much because of smart-lists, but rather because I like having my to-dos all in one place and I can't use Things effectively to manage work tasks due to lack of e2e encryption. So far I've resorted to using codenames and adding notes with URL-callbacks to encrypted notes in DEVONthink (where the actual task would be described in full). I've made some AppleScripts to trigger those with a press of my StreamDeck button, but still that got cumbersome rather quickly (particularly when it was a month later and I had to keep jumping between apps to get a full view of what I had to do).
It was also around that time that I started hearing rumours of a possible Things 4 in the near future. With that came a whole new set of worries. "Will this app fix all of my problems?", "will it frustrate me for not making anything I care about better (for me)?", "will they change into a subscription model?"... All those kept flowing through my mind and in the end it didn't matter. I need this now. Things doesn't work for me now. And I don't want to wait.
So the search for an alternative started.
I wont go through everything I tried. As a quick rundown of the highlights:
- Sorted3 → beautiful. Capable. Sync + usage can be clunky in places but has immense potential!
- Any.do → nice. But I don't like the look of the Mac app. Also not secure for work. Is a subscription.
- Amazing Marvin → WOW! Impressive. Not secure for work. Subscription. No Apple Watch app.
- NotePlan 3 → possibly the most interesting of the bunch. I seriously considered this since it's already included in my Setapp subscription. After using it for about 3 months I found that I don't have the discipline to keep it organised enough and it quickly got too messy to be useful for me. Still, definitely worth checking out!!! But no Apple Watch app.
- 2do → the smart lists are perfect! The notifications are great! The developer's vision for it seems in line to what I'd wish. But right now it is extremely outdated. And same as I didn't wait for Things, I'm not gonna wait for this one (which feels like a shame, but alas...).
- Todoist → nothing can beat their natural language input. It's perfect. And I want it really badly! But it's not safe for work tasks. It's a subscription. And they limit how many active projects you can have (granted, I don't think I'll ever reach that number, but I don't like having a limit imposed upon me).
- Reminders → this is actually pretty great. And it's safe for work notes (iCloud allows you to encrypt your data at both ends), but(!) their smart lists do not work with exclusion (i.e. "all tasks that do not have this tag"). And – quite frankly – the UI is just "ok" (particularly as a heavy "tasks with notes" user).
It was during this research process that I heard about OmniFocus 4 being available for TestFlight. I haven't used OmniFocus in a very long time, so I thought it might be worth a look.
First of all, even though they had announced a subscription model, I was happy to see that it is entirely optional. You can still buy version licenses just as I like. Great!
Second of all, they finally got rid of the context thing and now allow for (multiple! gasp) tags instead. Looking good!
Also, version 4 added all my favourite navigation shortcuts from Things 3! This is amazing!
Lastly, the cherry on top of my to-do cake was finding that since version 3, OmniFocus now has E2E encryption. Meaning I can use it for work!.
So, yeah. It was an easy decision once I found that out. I was still hesitant about the price at first, but my research shows there's literally nothing else out there for my needs. Having that cleared, I got back to my "must-have" list:
- [x] no subscription
- [x] smart lists (they call it "perspectives", but who cares?)
- [x] task management keyboard shortcuts
- [x] E2E
- [x] BONUS: automation-friendly
- [x] can start using now
I don't see why waste any more time.
Time to start fixing my system.